Too many Americans oppose and prevent serious efforts to head off problems until they become a crisis. They think we can postpone dealing with global warming, abuses in criminal trials, predictable shortages of fuel, food or water, threats to our health, and the backlash from our military adventures in the Middle East, among others.

It seems clear that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev exploded bombs at the Boston Marathon. Although some wanted him tried as an enemy combatant outside of the requirements of the Constitution, the Obama Administration has brought charges in the federal courts.

It’s fascinating how some Americans treat our Constitution. On the one hand, many people make a fetish about what the Founders thought and did in the eighteenth century, and on the other many, often the same people, argue that the Constitution is simply irrelevant, doesn’t apply, can safely be ignored or forgotten.

Let’s get past that one quickly. Although the evidence so far does not fit the definition, the Constitution has a very clear notion of what to call Americans who adhere to our enemies – “traitors.” Read the rest of this entry »

I’m delighted that the Occupy Wall Street movement has shifted the discussion from the demands of those who want to accumulate ever larger shares of the wealth of America, leaving less and less to most Americans, to the vision of those who understand that the true wealth of America is in the welfare and the future of its people. It requires a degree of willpower to call your attention to something else. But there are a couple of cases being argued in the U.S. Supreme Court, one tomorrow and one next week, that deserve a word. So this week let me address the one tomorrow.

Perry v. New Hampshire will be argued tomorrow at 10. The question is whether the trial judge was required to pass on the reliability of eye witness identification before letting the testimony go to the jury. Read the rest of this entry »